The Boy Who Would Be King...if only his dad weren't such a dumbass.

In the interest of Following Up on a few things mentioned in recent posts:

Yes, the air conditioning is fixed. And I only had to call twice and email once. Funny thing, though, Elite apparently has no interest in communicating with me directly. I'll call, leave a message (and I KNOW they're sitting right there by the phone) and eventually I'll hear back from whatever random repairman they're sending out. I sent them this email, along with a read-receipt request:

I called and left a voicemail last night at 10pm and haven't heard back so I thought I'd just double-check to see if anyone got the message. Our neighborhood's been experiencing brown-outs periodically and yesterday we discovered that our air conditioner isn't working. It's just blowing hot air. Would it be possible to send someone out here today? I realize that the recent storms caused a whole lot of damage and I'm sure the repairmen have busy schedules. Even a ballpark ETA would be great, so we could plan for the weekend when it's supposed to get hotter.

The kids and I are going to be be heading out to someplace cool, but I'll have my cell phone with me and I'll check my email when I get back. Thanks.

See how nice I am? Not once did I berate or insult them.

I got the read-receipt, so I know they read it. Nobody from the office answered it. I guess they assume that if they send someone out, that's tantamount to actually communicating with me. Well, it's NOT. It's shitty customer service. Seriously, a little call to follow-up would take 15 seconds out of someone's day and if my opinion of them weren't already pretty much cemented in my mind after the last year, it might possibly make me hate them just a teeny bit less. So nice to know they care.

Oh, and THEN they send out this dude who was about 79 years old - when he called I totally thought I was on Crank Yankers or something - asking me for directions on how to get to my house from Road X. I said "Road X is west of us, so come east on Road Y, and we're about 3 houses from the intersection of Road Y and Road Z."

He calls me from Road Y and Road DLAKFVARNTHSGXDFTLKVGN.

"I thought you said to go west on Road Y!"

"No, I said Road X is west of us."

"Well, I'll be DADGUMMED if I ever come out here again! Maybe I'll be by later..."

"Ooooh, I sure hope so! Fingers crossed!"

Who the fuck says DADGUMMED???

So he shows up about 30 minutes later, and the first thing he says to me is,

"Y'know, you should probably tell people to go SOUTH on Road Y. That makes more sense."

Y'know, Pa Kettle, you should probably GET A FUCKING MAP. Just a thought.

I was totally expecting him to pull open the door on the air conditioning unit to reveal a baby pterodactyl sleeping, like something out of The Flintstones, and then he'd poke it with a stick to wake it up, problem solved. But he fixed the A/C, somehow. God be praised. It was a-hundred-and-fuckin-TWO degrees outside today. Gih.

Update #2. I WENT TO LYLE LOVETT. You kinda have to appreciate what a big deal this is to me. I've wanted to see Lyle in concert for years, and it was always too expensive or otherwise impossible to go. Two years ago he did a FREE concert downtown but because the boys were too little and R had to work, I had to miss it. I cried. So I read that he would be coming to Live On the Levee to play a free concert down at the Arch. I would have gone by myself if I had to. That afternoon, two forces of evil began to conspire against me.

Force of Evil #1 - The Weather. The St. Louis area has been totally pummeled by storms recently. And for a while, it looked pretty threatening. I was unfettered. Bring on the lightning, I'm hangin with Lyle.

Force of Evil #2 - R's work. At 2pm they tell him he has to stay and work 30 minutes of overtime, which means now he'll leave at 6:30 instead of 6. The concert starts at 7, a good 40 minutes away. Great.

Here's why I love R. He says to take the boys to The Play Place, bring Beeb, pick him up at work and the three of us will go. That's what we did. And Lyle even waited for us to get there before he started. Everybody else probably just thought he was running late, but I'm convinced he was waiting for us.

Great show. If you ever get the chance to see Lyle for free, GO. If you ever get the chance to see him in any venue, at any cost, GO. We had a blast.

Beeb fell asleep in the car on back to R's car (which we left at his work), so I told him to pick up the boys and Beeb and I went home. While I was putting on my twisted-strap jammies, I saw Pie walking down the hall, sobbing the really quiet, almost-silent sob with a big open mouth and huge tears in his eyes.

"Buddy, what's wrong??"

"Daddy said I can't be King when I grow up. Daddy said I could NEVER be a King!!!"

Remind me to have a little conversation with Daddy.

"Well, Ry, there aren't really kings anymore. Guess what, though! You could be President of the United States, if you wanted. Wouldn't that be cool?"

"But Mom, Presidents don't use swords and shields, and they don't wear crowns!"

Now think of every Valedictorian, Best Actor/Actress, or any acceptance speech from any award you can imagine. Do any of them say "I'd like to thank my dad, who told me I couldn't be king when I grew up." NO. They say sappy shit like "I'd like to thank my parents who always believed in me and always told me I could be anything I wanted to be!" Insert thunderous applause.

Way to go, R. You just bought us years of therapy.

You guys know I really love R, right?


BONUS!! DVD recommendation:

Kathy Griffin Allegedly. R said watching 2 hours of her stand-up is like being on a date with me. I'm pretty sure it was meant as a compliment.